About Us

T & C’s

Gold Necklace Extenders

It can be difficult to know exactly what length you should choose when purchasing a solid gold necklace.

Often the length will be dictated by the choice of the pendant it carries. You know exactly where the pendant should sit against your chest, and the length of the necklace chain is selected to accommodate this. Being able to buy a necklace of an exact length is one of the major advantages of buying gold chains from Fraser Ross.

Sometimes however the necklace will be used for more than just one pendant, and you may wish to wear them in slightly different positions. So rather than having to purchase two separate chains, how would you feel if you could make one chain just a few centimetres longer? You can, and it’s called a chain extender.

If the chain is to be worn alone, then you may want to match it to the outfit(s) you are planning on wearing it with. Normally you would want to wear it above or below the neckline of your top. If it sits at about the same height of your collar opening, it won’t be seen, so it would be better to have it shorter or longer.

We have a few ways that you can change the length of your necklace chain to make it suit more of the clothing you wear.

One choice is to buy a matching chain extender. If for example, if the perfect necklace length was 45cm to 50cm, depending on your top, you could buy a 45cm necklace and a 5cm chain extender. This gives you the opportunity to wear your chain short to suit a high open neck top, or you can add the extra chain and it will fall nicely over the high collar of a t-shirt. As the chain extenders are only 5cm long, they should remain hidden behind you head and under you hair. If you can see one side, it just looks like the clasp you would normally see on your necklace anyway.

Another way to have a single chain that can be made to different lengths is the simplest of all. Work out the longest size that you would want for your necklace and that is the size to order. If you choose the right style of chain, it is possible to connect the parrot clasp to one of the links inside the necklace instead of the loop at the end of the chain.

This requires a style of gold chain that has wide open links so that the parrot clasp can fit inside a link along the necklace. Belcher chains are one style that this becomes an easy option with. Each individual link is normally round although oval belcher chains are also quite common, but both these designs have adequate space inside the links for a parrot clasp to attach. A 55cm chain can easily be shortened to say 47cm by connecting the clasp back down the chain at an appropriate link. The remaining chain simply hangs behind your head from the clasp on your necklace.

Cable chains and long open curb chains also have links that can accommodate the clasp, so you aren’t limited to one of the belcher chain styles.

So it is possible to make a necklace shorter by taking advantage of the open link style chains or make it longer by adding a necklace chain extender. In a perfect world we would be able to afford a necklace chain to suit every outfit, with and without a pendant, but that is rarely the case, so now you know how to do the best you can with what you have.